Now, over a month later, I thought I was ready to give it another stab, hoping to essentially combine these two runs into one giant outing, traversing the high peaks of the range from sun-up to sundown. The plan was to cover anywhere from the first seven to the first 10 of the Nolan's summits, starting with Mt. Massive in the north. I was hoping that with a sunrise start I could possibly be on the summit of Mt. Yale (peak 10) by last light, but would be satisfied with just getting to the ninth peak (Columbia), too. If afternoon thunderstorms--or anything else--proved to be an issue, I could easily bail at Winfield (after La Plata, #3), Rockdale (after Huron, #4), or Missouri Gulch (after Missouri, #5; or Belford/Oxford, #6/7).

The day's route from Massive in the north to Missouri Gulch in the south.

22,500' of vert. Ouch.

With a couple of mellower final days in the San Juans (Mt. Kendall on Sunday, Sneffels on Monday after I was rained out of an ascent of the Grenadiers' iconic Wham Ridge), I was up at 4:30am Tuesday morning and left the Leadville Fish Hatchery trailhead at the eastern base of Mt. Massive at exactly 5:30am. My ascent up its eastern face was fairly routine as I've hit this line a lot over the last month and a half. It's a long climb, starting with a big chunk of runnable terrain below treeline, and the 1h45 that it took me to gain the 5000' to its 14,421' summit would normally make for a more-than-sufficient daily run. The cold, clear nighttime weather had left a slick coating of frost on the mountain's upper reaches of boulders and talus, and even shortly after 7am clouds were beginning to gather presciently on the western horizon.

From my previous long runs on the course, I knew that adequate fueling was key to having a strong day, so I took my first gel at 1h30 and hit one every 30min thereafter, which is much more than I normally do during long training runs. However, steep efforts at high-altitude are inherently and almost unavoidably high-intensity, so over the long haul this kind of diligent calorie-intake is necessary. I chugged and refilled my only water bottle at a stream on Massive's southwestern slope; this kind of cameling-up would be my (quite effective) hydration strategy all day long.

After the long stretch of runnable grade up FS Rd 110J on the backside of Mt. Elbert, I was excited to get to the cairn at 11,400' marking the point to turn left and start hiking up Elbert's West Ridge to its 14,433' summit--the highest in the state and surpassed only by 14,500' Mt. Whitney in the Lower 48. The West Ridge route has become a favorite of mine because no one else is stupid enough--it climbs 3000' in little more than a mile-- to ascend it on an otherwise heavily-crowded mountain and because it offers a fun mix of scrambly scree and talus. I was pacing off of my previous Fish Hatchery-to-Winfield run and had been a few minutes behind due to bottle chugging-and-filling and some annoying fiddling with my shoelace tightness. However, despite an even effort I was able to gain quite a bit of time on this steep climb and arrived at the Elbert summit at 3:49 (9:19am), right back on pace. I spent a few seconds on top looking for the summit register, realizing that I'd forgotten to sign in on Massive's summit, but found it to be without pen and only tattered paper, so scarcely paused before beginning the choppy and techy descent down Elbert's southwest ridge towards Bull Hill.

I've covered this line a handful of times already this summer and flawlessly traversed below Bull Hill on its eastern face, avoiding any extra vert, before hitting the Golden Fleece Mine 4:19 into the day and beginning a quick scree-like descent into Echo Canyon through tails of minewaste and groves of aspen. Doing this descent more than once definitely helps and even with a quick stop to empty my shoes of stones, I hit the highway at 10:11am (4:41 after I started). I was careful not to hammer the 2mi of Highway 82 too hard and with a quick pit-stop in the ditch met Anna for the first time at the La Plata Trailhead parking lot at 10:28am, leaving only a minute later with a handful of extra gels and a bottle of fresh water. I was wary of just how tough this next 4500' climb to La Plata's 14,336' summit could be, but the extra calories seemed to be helping and I felt surprisingly strong, blitzing up the Northwest Ridge under gathering clouds in only 1:24 (I typically do 1h19-20 during training runs, without any stopping to drink/fill bottles) to reach the top at 11:53am.

The climb up La Plata's NW Ridge.

La Plata's summit.

Looking south from La Plata to Huron, Missouri, Belford & Harvard.

I again spent no time on the summit--not even pausing--and was pleased to find a reasonable trail through the talus on the east side of a prominent bump below the summit (I've typically skirted this awkwardly on the western side). Everything was clicking on all cylinders during the extended talus descent on LP's southern slopes and before long I was making the fun descent below the rim down and through the idyllic basin on the lightly-traveled South La Plata trail. I really enjoy the descent from this basin into Winfield and came into the mining ghost town feeling great at 12:50pm. It crossed my mind how lovely it would be to reach Winfield at 7:20 on LT100 race day feeling this good (not an unreasonable time--I've split it before--but I usually get there feeling pretty terrible after 20+ minutes of hot, exposed road running from the base of Hope Pass).

Anna was at Winfield for another quick chugging and refill of water and a re-stocking of gels. We planned to have her meet me on the summit of Belford with extra gels and water so that she could get a summit and so that I could re-supply in the middle of a long high and dry stretch. The agreement, however, was that if the weather turned dangerous we would just reconvene at the Missouri Gulch Trailhead.

Refueling at Winfield. Photo: Anna Frost.

By Winfield I'd already eaten 11 gels on the day, but I had grabbed 10 more just in case, thinking that if our planned meet-up didn't work for whatever reason, I would still have enough calories to get me through to Columbia. This thinking worked fine for a while. Some fairly ominous clouds had rolled in to block out the hot sun, and some light rain even began to fall as I started marching up Huron Peak's western slopes, but upon reaching treeline I started getting the all-too-familiar bouts of weakness and dizziness that comes with a massive bonk. I'd clearly been riding on the edge of caloric deficit all day and had finally crossed it at ~12,000' on Huron, so I sucked down four gels in quick succession, hoping I could get back on the black side of the caloric ledger without losing too much time.

Much to my joy, this quick intake of sugar seemed to help and despite my foggy head I was still maintaining a climbing rate of 3000'/hr without unreasonable effort. My stomach was rock-solid and I'd have sucked down four cheeseburgers if I'd had them. The dark clouds overhead worried me, but the higher I climbed it seemed the clearer the sky became and things were looking good again. I hunched my way to the 14,003' summit at 2:19pm, popped yet another gel, and then started down the fun and varied terrain on Huron's east face. This descent begins with a couple hundred feet of steep and loose scree, transitions into shifting babyheads, and eventually empties onto a jumble of stable, refrigerator-sized boulders. The line below Lois Lake is surprisingly established, angling down and to the left to intersect an avalanche chute that deposits onto the outlet of Clohesy Lake at the base of the valley.

Looking back up the scree/talus descent from Huron's north saddle.

I reached this stream crossing after 9h21, but took another extended stop for water-chugging and shoe-emptying, so didn't start up the western slopes of Mt. Missouri until 9h25 into the day. I'd been somewhat dreading the climb up Missouri, partly because of the continually gathering dark storm clouds, but mostly because I only had two gels left and felt like I could eat a dozen with little trouble. Really the only reason I started up and over the hill was because I knew Frosty would be waiting for me on the other side, wondering where I was; okay, there was no way I was only going to be satisfied with four summits, either.

Looking across to the daunting ascent of Missouri's West ridge.

Surprisingly, my hiking legs were still rock-solid on Missouri's steep, grassy northwestern ridge and the only time I was losing was to stop and loosen my shoelaces and dip from the alpine stream. Finally atop Missouri's 14,067' summit at 4:03pm I stopped not at all and immediately took off down the ridge towards the Missouri-Iowa saddle. I was getting impatient with the gathering clouds, though, and impulsively dropped down a scree chute maybe only 100' below the summit. My angling traverse towards Elkhead Pass included heaps of unstable scree and talus, but only 22min later I was at the 13,200' pass and weighing my options for continuing.

My decision was made almost instantly, as hail quickly began to fall and jagged lightning bolts shot down all around. Lightning is really the only thing in the mountains that scares me, so I blitzed down from the pass into Missouri Gulch, praying to the mountain gods to not get struck and hoping that Frosty had enough sense to get down off of Belford. Twenty soaked minutes later I was sitting down at 11,800' happy to be alive and I could see Frosty still flying down Belford's Northwest Ridge. It was still raining, the clouds were still rumbling, and Frosty had just had a fairly harrowing experience on Belford's summit, complete with buzzing rocks and hair standing on end, so with my detour into the valley it was an easy decision to continue descending down to the Roost at the Missouri Gulch TH, which I reached after 11h34min of running.

I was definitely bummed to make it through all the preliminary giant climbs of the line in 10:55 only to be denied all of the easy peaks of the day (I'd have tagged another two summits with only an extra 40min of clear skies), but all in all it was a hugely successful outing, and my biggest training run ever in terms of time on feet (11:34) and vertical (22,500').

As usual, any long run on the Nolan's line is humbling and taxing, but I really felt ready to go for at least the first nine peaks this time. Unfortunately, most of the time, the mountains don't care about our silly plans. More and more, I'm beginning to think that fitting in an attempt on the full 14 will be tough to do between Leadville and Cavalls, but I would very much like to still get through the first 10 (Massive-Yale). Ten is a nice round number, this is about the maximum amount I could fit in without significant night-time running, and the drainage between Yale and Princeton (County Road 306/Cottonwood Pass Road) marks an obvious geographic coda as this drainage is huge and requires about six or seven miles of flat, contoury running on the Colorado Trail before beginning the daunting vertical mile of ascent up Princeton. Massive to Yale would make a lot of sense, and I might even be able to recover enough after it to have a decent run at Cavalls in late September. I was on pace to get to the North Cottonwood Trailhead in 14h30 this last go-round, and would estimate approximately another 1hr-1h30 up Yale before the final hour descent down to the Avalanche Gully trailhead putting me at 16h30-17hr for the first 10 peaks. If I can do that in six weeks' time, I'll be pretty content.

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